


All The Bright Precious Things

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 10x14 coda, Angst (of a sort), Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:35:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3442250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the showdown in the barn, Sam can't focus on anything that isn't helping Dean unwind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Bright Precious Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainyhart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainyhart/gifts).



Once, when Sam was twelve or thirteen, there was a water nymph in some unnamed northern lake they had to take care of in the middle of December. It stayed hidden under sheets of ice, buried for days, or weeks, until someone went walking out, unsuspecting. Then it would lash out, grip its victim’s ankles, and pull downward. Dragging them into the frozen underwater tomb where they would be forced to suffocate to death before it would lay another finger on them.

Sam went out on the ice to lure it up. He was supposed to wait until it started coming up just under the frozen glass surface and then run to safety, let John take care of it. But Sam’s foot got caught on a warped spot of ice as he was turning, and the nymph’s burning cold fingers latched themselves around his foot, dragged him screaming into the lake. Dean threw a flamethrower at a weak patch and got him out before he could drown, but Sam never forgot the way the cold seized into his body, the instantaneous effect it had. Like being dropped straight into a pile of knives, searing into his flesh and his nose and his throat and lungs, lining him with cold, so that it had taken hours for the chill to subside. Days before Sam’s legs would work properly again, residual cold working its way over his body and making him useless under mounds of thick sheets. 

For years now, Sam has known pain. He has known grief, and sorrow, and devastation so deep it wracked his bones and tore him apart, rent him asunder and when he was put back together, he was not put back whole.

He has been concerned and worried and scared and angry and upset and terrified and he has held his brother’s dying body in his arms twice too many times—but this. Standing here in the barn, watching Dean disappear behind the great wooden doors to face Cain—this is the first time Sam has ever known pure, literal _fear._

It crawls under his skin and shivers out over the cracks in his chest. Tightens icy fingers around his throat and cuts off his air supply until he’s gasping for air, fear reaching unforgiving sharp tendrils down into his lungs, ripping them open. Feels just like being plunged back into that lake, but this time there’s no guarantee Dean can rush forward at the last minute and pull him back out.

Sam’s chest aches with the force of the idea that this time will be the last time. That after today, he might not have anyone to keep him upright, to keep the darkness and the toxicity running low like a fever in his veins at bay. The idea that he might lose his anchor, his one real tie to the world, the one person he can look at and touch and listen to and know he’s _real_ —Sam closes his eyes. Takes in a deep breath, and waits for the grief and the fear and the ice to overwhelm him. 

Half an hour later, though, when the door opens, it’s Dean. Pale and shaken, covered in blood, his face tighter and more drawn than Sam has seen in years. Dragging the Blade behind him, walking like there are iron shackles on his legs, but it’s _him._ Present and alive and Sam is dizzy with the relief that sweeps through him, has to grab at the wall for a minute to stay standing. 

Dean hands the Blade to Cas. Tells Crowley he was lying the whole time, and then. Then his eyes light on Sam, and something gives in his shoulders. Sam is there before Dean can even start to fall, holding him up under his arms, letting his brother’s head loll on his shoulder as he feels the fear shatter against his ribs. 

“You did it, Dean,” he gasps out, raw and hoarse and pressing his tears into Dean’s hair because he needs to be strong right now, he needs to be there to hold both of them up. 

Dean doesn’t say anything, but his fingers tighten in a clench against the back of Sam’s shirt. Sam can feel his body shaking where he’s got him wrapped up in his arms, and he pulls Dean closer, wishes he could give him _more._ That he could crawl between Dean’s bones, settle down in his flesh and maybe then both of them would feel complete.

Dean mumbles, “C’n we go home, Sammy?” against the side of Sam’s neck, and if Sam had wings, he could not get them out of that barn any faster. 

*

It’s a fourteen-hour drive from Ohio to Lebanon, but it feels more like forty as he tears down Highway 36, tense with one hand on the wheel, the other draped across the bench seat, just in case Dean wants. Just in case he might need. Anything. 

But Dean stays propped up against the passenger seat window, staring out at the long lines of trees and empty barren stretches of fields they pass, the sky littered with stars. At some point the sun starts coming up behind them, edging along the steel and chrome workings of the Impala, lining them all in gold, and Sam watches it catch on Dean’s hair. Sunlight plays against the pale cast of his skin, dances over the line of his neck and chases back the shadows cast under his jaw, but Dean still looks exhausted. Dead, almost, and Sam’s heart won’t stop clenching. He’s almost afraid to look at the road, fear creeping back in along his edges, icy and familiar and cruel. Telling him if he takes his eyes off his brother, when he looks back Dean will be dead. Some vital part of him sucked out when he murdered Cain, and Sam keeps his hand between them, trembling on the leather as they sail toward oblivion. 

By the time they get back to the bunker it’s mid-morning, the air frosted over with winter chill and Sam hustles Dean inside fast, gets him leaning against the solidity of a wall in the main room, and he asks:

“You want—what do you want? What, Dean, anything, just tell me—” 

Dean drags his eyes up to Sam’s. The skin below them is battered and bruised, dark colors bleeding into the almost gray pallor of his cheeks. The green of his irises dulled, cast over with a waxen sheen, so that his entire demeanor is washed away, faded Polaroid of himself. Those little cuts scattered down the side of his face, the only bright points in the room, stark red and shining against everything else. Sam wants desperately to touch, feels his palm ache with the need, but his fingers just twitch useless at his side as he waits with the ice and the shards of despair caught twisted tight in his lungs.

Dean says, “I need—I don’t feel.” Gestures at himself, mouth pulled in at the edges, and he says, “Just gotta get clean,” and Sam nods immediately:

“Yeah, okay, I can go turn the shower on—” He’s shaking as he talks, mouth running on automatic, words pulled up from somewhere inside him where he doesn’t have to think about them before they escape, because right now if he thinks about anything he’ll probably explode, but Dean’s shaking his head:

“Don’t have the energy,” he mumbles. “Can you just. Uh.” His nostrils flare out; he looks away from Sam, pale line of his throat exposed, soft streaks of blood drying slow in the hair that curls around the crest of his ear, and Sam swallows, watching his pulse jump. Dean’s got his lower lip sucked in between his teeth, chewing on it like he’s thinking, and Sam’s line of defense is crumbling fast against the sudden onslaught of his brother. 

He’s never been good at control, when it comes to Dean.

“Can I what,” Sam asks, when it’s been quiet for too long, and Dean flicks his washed-out silver-green eyes back, face drawn, cheeks flushed. 

“I want you to,” Dean starts, more to his feet than to Sam, but he’s gesturing at the scattered constellation of glass cuts on his cheek and temple and Sam knows what he wants, fierce overprotective swell in his chest as he understands what his brother is asking for. 

He puts his arm across Dean’s shoulders—and it’s a mark of how exhausted Dean is that he doesn’t immediately try to shove Sam away—leads him down the hallway to the bathroom. The fluorescent light hums and crackles before it comes on all the way and in its harsh pale light Dean looks even worse, every line in his skin etched out, a road map Sam knows better than any atlas. 

He props Dean up against the cool porcelain of the sink and Dean laughs, low and rough and at least partially amused. “Seriously, dude, ‘m okay with standing,” he says, but there’s a hard line to his shoulders, small pained groove between his eyebrows, to suggest otherwise. 

Sam reaches around Dean and into the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. Catches a small glimpse of his own face—just as drawn as Dean’s, just as haggard, death showing through the cracks, fault lines getting weaker—but he ignores that, as he always has, and takes out a washcloth instead. It’s still at least partially white, fabric gone stiff from several years of use without drying it properly, and Sam runs it under the faucet for a minute before applying careful pressure to Dean’s cuts.

He hisses out through his teeth, eyes closing. Head jerking a little to the side and Sam sighs, reaching out and gripping Dean’s jaw in his hand, fingertips small rough points against the heat of Dean’s skin. “Stay still for a second,” he says, “you asked for this, remember,” and presses himself in a little closer. So that their bodies are flush, Dean’s heartbeat evident against Sam’s chest, and as he dabs at his brother’s blood he feels his world narrowing down to just this, just his hand on Dean’s face and his nose less than a foot from Dean’s own. Their faces nearly level except for how Dean has slumped a little against the sink and the wall, leaning into Sam’s touch slightly, and every time Sam brings the washcloth away to rinse it in the sink it comes off pink. 

Sam’s fingers are light on Dean’s temple. “Be more careful next time you wanna take out a sixty-thousand year old entity, yeah?” he murmurs, wincing when Dean hisses as the cloth touches broken skin. 

“‘m thirty-six, dude,” Dean says, kinda hoarse. “Can handle one little fight, you know.” 

Sam finds his gaze drawn on instinct to Dean’s mouth, the soft red bow of it. If Sam were to move his thumb a fraction of an inch to the right, he’d be touching Dean’s lower lip. 

“I know, Dean,” Sam says quietly. 

“Can even take care of myself,” Dean says, shifting the long heated line of his body between the wall and Sam. Dropping his own eyes to Sam’s mouth, and there’s no mistaking the hunger there. The raw, unfettered want, because Dean’s too tired to hide it. 

Sam swallows. Lifts the cloth off his brother’s skin, steps back half an inch. His hands are shaking, tingling with the remembered echo of Dean underneath him. He hasn’t been this close to Dean, this pressed against him, in a long time. It’s making him stupid, clumsy with want.

Dean exhales, shaky. “Sam,” he breathes, and Sam watches fascinated as his own hand trails down the side of his brother’s face, down the warm trembling rough line of his neck. He sets the rag down in the sink and curls his other hand in Dean’s belt loops, tugging him back in. So that their bodies are once again flush, chests pressed together, Sam’s heartbeat ratcheting hard against Dean’s. Their hips are snug, almost latched, and Sam feels a low flush rise up as he’s slammed with mental images: Dean rocking up into him, pressed where he is against the wall, breathing hard as Sam mouths down against his racing pulse—

A touch on Sam’s jaw brings him back into himself. Dry uncertain catch of Dean’s fingers on his skin, pulling Sam’s head forward, so that their foreheads are tipped together.

“Hey,” Sam says, low.

“Hey,” Dean murmurs, and then they’re kissing.

It’s slow, careful. Sam’s hand curled loosely around the back of Dean’s neck, thumb scraping over his collarbone. Dean’s hand laid flat against Sam’s cheek, so that Sam is hyperaware of every inch of his palm, his fingertips. Slow careful slide up over the crest of his cheekbone, into the soft crush of Sam’s hair. Dean is moving his mouth gently against Sam’s, light little exploratory touches of tongue to Sam’s bottom lip.

It’s so quiet in the bunker, just permeated by the soft sounds of their mouths moving together. Sam’s kind of rocking his hips forward, lazy sinuous movements, but there’s no real urgency. He’s mostly focused on Dean’s mouth, its soft fullness, the hot virile scent of his skin.

The last time Sam tasted Dean, he still hadn’t gone into the Cage. He never thought he would have this again.

When Dean pulls away, it’s slow, reluctant. His eyes are closed, but there’s a small smile tugging just at the corners of his mouth. He breathes Sam’s name again, reverential and quiet, and Sam strokes his cheek:

“Yeah, Dean.”

Dean tilts his face up. There’s some color coming back into his cheeks, the haunted expression around his eyes slowly fading away. Sam can feel Dean’s warmth all through him, shattering the last shards of cold terror still lingering from before. “Let’s go lie down,” he says, and Dean nods immediately.

“Yeah,” he says. “Whatever you want, Sammy.”

Sam leads Dean down the hall, one hand hovering just over his shoulders, just in case he needs it. Dean keeps sneaking little looks over, this soft half-smile on his face. Sam wants to kiss those little lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. He feels like he’s resurfacing after long years of drowning. He feels blessed.

In Dean’s room, they stretch out over his mattress, Sam laying his brother down— _c’mon, Sam, I can do this,_ Dean says, but he doesn’t push Sam off—and then curling up behind him. Wrapping one arm around Dean’s waist, curling the other hand against his spine. Pressing his mouth against the back of Dean’s neck, in the feather-light tufts of hair there.

“I got you,” Sam whispers, feeling Dean slowly start to relax against him, growing heavier as he drifts off in Sam’s arms. “You’re gonna make it, Dean.”


End file.
